Gone
by Moiranna
Summary: For years Dante has heard that melody in his dreams, whispered words he never can remember in the waking hours. The memory he vaguely recalls but can't quite grasp hides more than he expected. Pre DMC3


**Author:** Moiranna  
 **Title:** Gone **  
** **Theme** : #29 – Melody  
 **Rating:** PG  
 **Realm:** Devil May Cry  
 **Pairing:** None  
 **Characters:** Dante, Eva, Vergil  
 **Genre:** Tragedy, family  
 **Warnings:** Character death (inadvertently)  
 **Word-count** : 830  
 **Summary:** For years Dante has heard that melody in his dreams, whispered words he never can remember in the waking hours. The memory he vaguely recalls but can't quite grasp hides more than he expected. Pre DMC3  
 **Notes:** I don't usually do song-fics. This is a bit of an exception to the rule for the theme of the story. I really recommend that you look up the song in question on youtube before reading this, it's "Gone" by Karliene.

* * *

It's in the middle of the night when Dante wakes up yet again from that never-ending nightmare when he finally remembers the words of the lullaby his mother sung to Vergil or him late one night when they couldn't fall asleep. It's one of his earliest memories, they couldn't have been more than four years old. At that time they had been living in the villa placed deep in the forests many miles from any trace of civilisation. Dante recalls that during the years he has vaguely heard the notes when woken up from nightmares, but every time he has woken up the words have fallen to the realm of Morpheus, only a vague echo he never could place.

 _Dark the stars and dark the moon_

 _Hush the night and the morning gloom_

During those mornings when woken up a lump caught in his throat from some suppressed feeling he can't define he instinctively reaches for the pendant around his neck, grasping it for long seconds, eyes closed while calming the furious beating of his heart, then later shrugging his shoulders and figuring that whatever it was he had dreamt was unimportant.

 _Tell the horses and beat on your drum_

 _Gone their master, gone their son_

Maybe it was instinctual, his subconscious speaking to him, but one of the first things he ever played on his guitar were a few of the notes of that forgotten tune. Blinking against the light, confused and wondering where the hell the sad little tune came from he gave a snort, breaking the pensive moment by trying to pull off a Jimi Hendrix riff that went less than perfect.

 _Dark the oceans and dark the sky_

 _Hush the whales and the ocean tide_

It eventually got to the point of that Dante half expected to hear that forgotten tune every time he awoke from a nightmare. Very rarely was he ever disappointed. Those nights he didn't hear it were the ones where he woke up in cold sweat, fighting to draw breath when the memories from _that_ night came crashing down onto him. All the blood, death, violence, the cold blue unseeing eyes of his mother etched onto the inside of his retinas so fiercely that he sat in bed, clutching at his head, palms pressing into his eyes to the point of where it hurt in order to try to in any way burn away the images.

 _Tell the soldiers and beat on your drum_

 _Gone their master, gone their son_

Vergil was alive. How the hell was he alive? Dante had seen his broken and torn body dragged off _that_ night. What disturbed him even more was that it had sparked the faintest of hopes that if he was alive then so was mom, something Vergil with a sneer informed him was not the case. That she was too human, lacked any power. Staggering to bed that night Dante wasn't the slightest surprised that he could hear the whispered lullaby again, could almost feel gentle fingers combing through his hair, imagining tears falling on the pillow next to him.

 _Dark the stars and dark the moon_

 _Hush the night and the morning gloom_

A year passed without even the trace of that song appearing in his mind. It fell into the far lurking corners of Dante's mind, and he was instead occupied by keeping an eye on what his twin was up to. Still he knew there was something about that tune that he was missing, some importance.

 _Tell the horses and beat on your drum_

 _Gone their master, gone their son_

It hardly came as a surprise that he could hear his mother's voice singing on the night that the Temen-ni-gru fell. Only this time when the sun broached the horizon he _knew_. Could remember that night when Vergil and he were four years old, Vergil asking her why father hadn't come home since he always showed up on their birthday. Dante saw his mother struggle to remain cheerful, kissing their foreheads and whispering that he'd be home when he could. Only even then Dante had known that she was lying. And to soothe any protests they'd had she'd started to sing that lullaby, though she never sang it again. The four-year old hadn't understood just why her voice had been so sad or why she had been crying. The tears might not have fallen from her cheeks, but he had heard them clear as daylight.

 _Dark the oceans and dark the sky_

 _Hush the whales and the ocean tide_

Eventually, several years later he understood that it wasn't _one_ time that she had sung it. She had sung it again, tears in her voice and pain half garbling her words that last night, trying to keep him calm. When her lips couldn't form words she had just hummed it, fainter and fainter until all was quiet.

 _Tell the soldiers and beat on your drum_

 _Gone their master, gone their son_


End file.
